fkr - exploration is key to excellence

FOSDEM 2026 is already more than a week old, currently tons of stuff going on. Like every year FOSDEM was a blast. Before heading to FOSDEM another “like every year”-experience was on: Univention Summit. It was the 18th Univention Summit and once again increased in size of attendees. The UV Summit switch to a two day programm (in the past the second day was not really conference programm, but workshops). Together with Jutta Horstmann (CO-CEO Heinlein Group / WG Public Affairs OSBA), Dirk Gernhardt (City of Munich), Dr. Martin Hagen (City of Bremen), Leonhard Kugler (ZenDiS) and I were part of a panel on the “Deutschland-Stack” on the second day and I represented the SCS views in the round. See this post.

For many years, I referred to the Univention Summit as the “New Years Reception of the german open source business scene”. This I need to revise. For once, it is not only the “german” (or for that matter DACH) region anymore. Some talks and even the panel on the first day were in english (and the whole event was live translated iinto english) - BUT it has become a hotspot for all and everything “digital sovereign” (in a positiv sense).

At FOSDEM we (SCS) organized the Devroom “Building Europe’s Public Digital Infrastructure” together with the ZenDiS. This was the second year that we did a joint devroom and it was a blast. A short roundup can be found on LinkedIn. We’ve had excellent talks in the room. You should watch all of them. If you can only watch one of them, watch this.

What I find mind boggling: The topic of Digital Sovereignty is so often still seen only under the aspects of current geo politics. While this of course makes the giant dependence on US companies and technology visible the striving for digital sovereignty is about so much more. This episode of the Cloud Cast is a good example for the - imho - short comings of the discussion.